Entertainment

4 Excellent Indie Games With Real Educational Value

Flinging exasperated birds across your iPhone screen can be fun but mindless. And while Math Blaster was better than doing homework, you wouldn't often find kids begging their parents for video games about long division (Worst. Birthday. Ever.).

These days, independent game developers are giving triple-A studios a run for their buckets of money. And while white-knuckle shooters and old-timey platformers abound in the indie space, some of the most fun offerings feature immersive mechanics that twist the ol' noggin in creative new ways.

And therein lies the secret sauce of educational gaming: an experience that's so entertaining, you won't even feel your neurons firing.

Whether you're hunting for new entertainment or trying to hook your kids on something more constructive than text messaging, we've highlighted some projects that are innovating the industry. Also, by playing and purchasing these titles, you'll be supporting independent development.

Are you playing any cerebral indie games right now? Tell us your favorites (and where to get them) in the comments below.

4 Excellent Indie Games With Real Educational Value

Ever build a model rocket and shoot it off behind the school? (If not, I'll be over here quietly weeping for your childhood.) To ensure maximum altitude and the safe return of the capsule, your miniature engineering skills had to be up to snuff.

Indie sim Kerbal Space Program aims to recreate that challenge on your PC. Your mission: engineer a rocket ship that can get three adorable alien astronauts into orbit without, you know, sending them to a fiery death.

Essentially, you're trying create enough thrust to overcome the weight of your ship, while packing enough fuel to get out of the atmosphere — the same challenges that face real aeronautic engineers. Admittedly, it's also fun watching your idiotic designs explode on the launching pad. The game is still in the alpha stage, and while the selection of boosters, fuel tanks and couplers available may seem limited now, the combinations are endless.

While basically a proof-of-concept right now, keep an eye on KSP. There are plans in the works for more rocket parts, different mission types, community modding and deeper space program management.

Too impatient to meddle with rocket parts? Jump right into the stars with Universe Sandbox, an incredibly detailed virtual planetarium.

Every known body in our solar system is accounted for in this game, each with its own granular roster of stats (mass, diameter, density, orbit eccentricity, etc.) that guide its movements according to Newtonian physics. Additional simulations show extra-solar bodies and neighboring galaxies in limited detail.

Zoom down to the surfaces of Saturn's moons, or fly back thousands of lightyears to see our solar neighborhood in cosmic perspective. Quickly search for a celestial name, or glide your mouse across orbital trails to focus in on dwarf planets, moons and stars. The scope of these features alone makes Universe Sandbox a top notch simulation.

But that's just the tip of the asteroid. As the game's title suggests, this is a completely malleable universe. Manipulate any or all of the above stats to dynamically change the cosmos. Throw five extra moons into orbit around Venus, make Neptune a black hole, or give Pluto enough mass to reclaim its former planethood — take that, scientists!

Smash planets together, change the gravitational constant and watch the solar system spin into oblivion. The controls are so precise that you're not just exploding celestial bodies — you're deciding how many pieces they explode into.

Perhaps the only fault of this mind-blowing simulator is that the options are ridiculously granular — there's so much to do, you may not even know what you're doing half the time.

Dabbling in this scale model of the universe will certainly put things into perspective, and the meticulous attention to scientific detail should make it a go-to learning aide for every classroom.

Crayon Physics has been around for a few years now, but it's always refreshing to watch this concept in action. It's a puzzler at heart — guide the ball to the star, advance to the next level. But it's the open-ended design that makes it special.

There's no right or wrong way to solve a level. Draw anything with your mouse and it will become a physical object on the game board. Advancing the ball could be as simple as dropping a large box on it, or drawing an elaborate pulley and ramp system. Your sketches can turn into wheels, ropes and levers, all of which obey the rules of gravity and collision once you lift your finger off the mouse.

There is a lot of game packed into the deluxe version, so if this kind of creative brain bender appeals to you, snag it. You won't be sorry.

The poster child for modern indie game development, Minecraft was created by lone Swedish programmer Markus Persson and was offered as a buggy alpha release back in May of 2009. For about $12 players who purchased the evolving game would have access to all subsequent iterations, forever.

The popularity of the sandbox building game exploded on social networks like Reddit and YouTube. People follow its development religiously and share their amazing creations across the web. To date, Minecraft has sold 3 million copies, and it's not even finished.

Beyond the business model, the game itself is pretty groundbreaking (groundbreaking — see what I did there?). Every square meter of the procedurally-generated world is a block. Break down a block of wood to acquire the wood; break down a block of stone, acquire that stone. Use the materials in various combinations to craft tools that let you harvest other blocks. Place blocks to build structures, and use tools to mine deeper into the earth for valuable minerals.

What Minecraft lacks in accurate physics, it makes up for in unparalleled sandbox creativity. It's like Legos on crack. There's even a mineral that lets you lay electrical circuits, which players have used to build everything from switch-activated doors to working computers inside the game.

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